Call me boring, conservative, unsophisticated, whatever, I far prefer this to the slapdash look of the cantilevered design since it actually looks like a single building. I am not opposed to the idea of a cantilever; I am opposed to a building that completely changes style at such an awkward height. The ratio of the base's height beneath the cantilever to the tower height above it was just off somehow - the proportions were just not aesthetically pleasing at all.

Ive estimated the height of the previous rendering and im guessing this is shorter than the previous rendering and so it looks like its 650 feet. Give or take a few feet. My thoughts on the new design are : meh. Its ok but it looks a lot like the 435 north Park proposal.

From the north, the skyline view of the top part of the building could be pretty cool, at least if the stripe is illuminated somehow. Not that Chicago should aim for this overall, but having one modestly-sized quasi "high-tech" or so called "futuristic" (whatever that means anyway) looking building in the skyline might be interesting.

For those that say it looks like 435 N Park. I feel like that is taking the Robie House and Taelsin West and say that they look the same. I can see the respective firm's philosophy bearing on the two, but they aren't the same. I actually quite like the novel shapes that have been carved out of the building with the balconies. It was a great solution to a banal problem (that of providing ugly balconies) - essentially the architects foremost goal.

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“The test of a great building is in the marketplace. The Marketplace recognizes the value of quality architecture and endorses it in the sales price it is able to achieve.” — Jon Pickard, Principal, Pickard Chilton

Underwhelming at best. To think what was meant to be; we end with this. Sad.

The original design wasn't very good. I mean, it was decent, but I think people were mostly excited about height. Compared with that one, I think this version is much better. Not as wonderfully shocking as the DeStefano design, to be sure, but good nevertheless.

It wasn't necessarily innovative. Cantilevers have been done plenty of times before. The DeStefano design took the notion of "form follows function" to an absolutely gruesome extreme and I'm glad to see it's not actually going to look like that in the end.

If it wasn't on the river, I'd be happy with it as infill. However, with that site as prominent as it is, I'd opt for a more daring approach. A respectfully polarizing design is preferable to an apathetic slab of a building in just about every case - including this one.

The previous design inspired discussion, and would have been the most talked about building in Chicago since Aqua or the Spire. It would have been a fantastic anchor on river tours and an unflinching manifestation of the real estate crash in physical form.

This new design looks like any ol' SCB Econobox® rough draft.

I can only hope One South Halsted, LVDA's DePaul project, and E+W University's building all get built soon so we can have some well-articulated and energized highrises crop up. (Any more I'm missing?)

Quote:

Originally Posted by ardecila

Well, we still have a rendering reveal for Wolf Point that should be coming up soon. Of course, I can't remember the last time Pelli did anything daring like a huge cantilever...

I heard some chatter out-of-the-blue from an architect working on the Wolf Point proposal. Sounds like there is some measurable forward movement on it...he was excited. Hopefully something is made public sooner rather than later.

I'm looking forward to the renderings, but the pessimist in me says that it will be yet anotherultra-prime riverfront property spoiled by a nearly featureless glass box. Time will well.

What a POS. Looks like they've decided to drop the density on it and just finish it structurally as planned and cut it off before it gets too high. Looks like complete shit. I hope the core has degraded to the point where they have to tear the whole thing down so we don't have to look at this blight on the riverfront for the next 100 years.

Seriously, this design is just shitty and cobbled together. It reminds me of the Fairbanks in Streeterville which is painfully obviously a Start/Stop/Redesign project like this.

Sorry Related, but slapping a shitty pattern of balconies on the building and aping the Optima facade doesn't make for good design. This is probably SCB and is a hackjob if I've ever seen one.

Fuck this, looks like they pussied out and decided to blow the density to avoid a cantilever.

In other news, it appears there were updated renderings of 500 N LSD in there which were far more attractive than the original design and would account for the weirdness in regards to the double height floor I noticed.

^^^
Wow, NWM, you seem angry today. I can't say this building is that bad, though it isn't my favorite. The balconies are interesting and, though Hovey does it a lot, one cannot call glass boxes with curtain walls an aping of Optima. It is a common trope in modern architecture. I think that the balcony arrangement (while not radical) is a nice movement of this type of modernism. It is hard to tell in the pics, but it looks like (towards the top at least) the balconies don't fill the recesses all the way.

Moreover, this is a far more cohesive design than the previous one with the cantilever and looks far less like a "start/stop/start" design than that does. This looks like a building that is a bit boring, but was always designed that way. I think we would be fine with it had it not been home to so much hope.

__________________
“The test of a great building is in the marketplace. The Marketplace recognizes the value of quality architecture and endorses it in the sales price it is able to achieve.” — Jon Pickard, Principal, Pickard Chilton